Dwa przełomy. Wilhelm Dilthey i historycznokulturowe przesłanki science wars
Two breakthroughs. Wilhelm Dilthey and the Historical and Cultural Premises of Science Wars

Summary/Abstract: The contemporary discrepancy between the humanityes and the mathematical and natural sciences prompts a retrospective rethinking of the set of historical circumstances that have led to the breakdown of scientific life into isolated domains (‘the two cultures’, as C. Snow called it). As a result of this break-up, natural science mystifies the humanities, humanities mystify mathematical and natural sciences. The dispute dispute takes on an ideological colour, turning into a competition for a monopoly on the power to define reality. In this context, Dilthey’s concept of establishing the humanities as a kind of inversion of the natural sciences becomes perversely topical, all the more so, the influence of this concept on the self-definition of humanities. According to the approach presented in the article, Dilthey’s postulate of the scientific sovereignty of humanistic research, completely independent from empirical and mathematical natural science, is in this approach an intermediate link between the two phenomena. The first is the escapist reaction of the artistic community to the seventeenth-century scientific revolution; the second − a conglomerate of such contemporary trends as sociological biophobia and anti-naturalism (aspects of cultural constructivism) or attempts to semiologize contemporary physical theories. Out of necessity, these tendencies are only roughly outlined here with the awareness that they themselves constitute a multifaceted research issue. Thus, in the article, Dilthey’s philosophy of the humanities comes to the fore, especially those aspects that show a sufficiently clear analogy to the crisis of the 17th century and at the same time submit to a sufficiently justified interpretation as one of the premises of the contemporary conflict of sciences.

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